Skip to Main Content
Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition
book

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

by Steve Holzner
January 2013
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
336 pages
5h 35m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Chapter 4

Back and Forth with Harmonic Oscillators

In This Chapter

arrow Hamiltonians: Looking at total energy

arrow Solving for energy states with creation and annihilation operators

arrow Understanding the matrix version of harmonic oscillator operators

arrow Writing computer code to solve the Schrödinger equation

Harmonic oscillators are physics setups with periodic motion, such as things bouncing on springs or tick-tocking on pendulums. You’re probably already familiar with harmonic oscillator problems in the macroscopic arena, but now you’re going microscopic. There are many, many physical cases that can be approximated by harmonic oscillators, such as atoms in a crystal structure.

In this chapter, you see both exact solutions to harmonic oscillator problems as well as computational methods for solving them. Knowing how to solve the Schrödinger equation using computers is a useful skill for any quantum physics expert.

Grappling with the Harmonic Oscillator Hamiltonians

Okay, time to start talking Hamiltonians (and I’m not referring to fans of the U.S. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton). The Hamiltonian ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition

Steven Holzner

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118460863Purchase book